


The First Kiss Phenomenon and Other Justifications for Loving People and Programs

by kalelle



Series: Lovenest 'verse [1]
Category: Tron (Movies), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-23
Updated: 2011-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:05:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalelle/pseuds/kalelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is the first in the expansive Lovenest verse, found on Livejournal at The_Grrrrid.</p>
    </blockquote>





	The First Kiss Phenomenon and Other Justifications for Loving People and Programs

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in the expansive Lovenest verse, found on Livejournal at The_Grrrrid.

**[with the truth out, baby, i belong to you]**

Sam and Junior are fast friends when they get around to actually trying. They've got a freakish amount in common, and it brings them together in ways they didn't expect. Sam thought Junior would be a stuck up bitch, hard to get along with. Junior thought Sam would be a flippant idiot, all body no brain. They were both wrong. Junior arms himself with his style and his attitude and his skill to hide the vast insecurities in his heart. He uses fierce ambition to hide his desire for love and affection. Sam uses his body to distract people from noticing his mind. He doesn't want to be the Son of Flynn his entire life. He wants to be Sam. He shies away from others expectations and builds up his walls. 

Their friendship moves faster than either can fully comprehend. From being something close to predestined enemies, they become the closest of companions, seeking solace in each other. They play video games together, they read books together. They listen to music together, they go on road trips together. They get drunk together, and they fight together. They measure their time together in cigarette stubs and empty bottles, in chat logs and cellphone minutes. They measure their time together in firsts. First broken bone, first motorcycle, first ridiculous suit, first leather jacket. 

One night, they're up on the room of Sam's new apartment, staring out over the city, music weaving in and out of the sounds of the world around them. The air smells like rain, and exhaust, and of the menthol cigarettes that Sam likes to smoke. They're talking, lazy, but not saying anything. They don't have to really be saying anything, they're just happy to be together. Sam is reclined back on his elbows, his long body stretched out, and Junior is beside him with his long legs crossed, hands on his knees, back straight. He looks down at Sam, catches him in a stare, watches him push up to close to level, and completes the unfinished gesture, leans down and Sam tastes like mint and beer, tastes like the city, painfully masculine. The kiss is gentle, almost shy, another first. 

Their friendship moves faster than either can fully comprehend.

 **[show me everything and tell me how]**

Quorra is so full of wonder at everything, but that doesn't make her a child, and it doesn't mean that she knows nothing. She is full of knowledge, full of understanding. But understanding things doesn't mean that they don't fill her stomach with butterflies, or cause her to stare, or stop and think about them. She spends the first few days in this new world wandering around Sam's apartment and touching things, running her hands over surfaces, feeling things, feeling differences. She pushes buttons, she taps on things. She knows what everything is, but she's establishing a base line for comparison. 

After she has the apartment down, she starts to explore the world around her. Sam guides her through it, at first because she needs him to, and then because she wants him to. She wants him there with her when she spends six hours looking at the stars. She wants him there when she dives into a pool and feels the water on her skin. She wants him there when she has ice cream. She wants him there when she gets caught in the rain. He makes her happy, just being there. His laugh lines make her happy. His eyes make her happy. 

After she explores the world around her, she starts to explore the people. She tries to figure out people and what makes them go. Their motivations. Their happiness, their sadness. She wants to know why people are the way they are. The only thing in this world that has thrown her has been the diversity of people. Sometimes they make her sad. The man who yelled at her for dancing on the sidewalk made her sad. Sometimes they make her happy. Mister Alan introducing her to thirteen different kinds of tea one night made her happy. 

After she explores the people around her, she explores Sam. She watches how he walks, watches his rhythm. She watches the was his hips move, watches the straight line of his back. She watches his eyes dance when he is happy, watches them dull down to burnished steel when he is unhappy. She watches him when he is so tired he sleeps on the kitchen floor with Marvin, and she watches him when he is so wired for sound that she stays up for three days. She watches him smile at her. She watches him when she kisses him, watches his surprise melt into a simple pleasure. She watches his eyes dance.

 **[you saw me at the worst, you caught me falling first]**

After Sam is done rifling through code, looking for him, finding him, saving him, it occurs to Sam that he has no idea who Rinzler is. He is not Tron. He is not Tron corrupted. Rinzler and Tron are separate programs entirely. When Rinzler wakes up on a clean surface, casts his eyes around the space, the realization of where he is and what happened settles into dust, he presses his forehead to the juncture of Sam's neck and feels a pulse and is at peace for the first time in an era. The truth is, Rinzler doesn't know who he is any more than Sam does. 

They discover Rinzler together in the physical world. Quorra helps Rinzler transition as much as she can, but he is glued to Sam as much as he can be. His vocal cords are shot, so his voice is low, soft, and he makes a sound like a purr. He is self conscious about the sound, the first emotions he fully comes in to is the bastard child of shame and guilt. Sam does the best he can to reassure him, though never quite sure of himself either. Rinzler is shy of his body, of the long black lines that drag across his pale skin. He tries to wash them off, and Sam does his best to reassure him that they aren't ugly, he isn't ugly. He grows his hair out from the military cut it was in. It's long now, almost to his chin, slightly wavy, dark. He takes to black jeans and leather jackets. He catches Sam in a stare, watches him look away with red cheeks. 

Sam makes Rinzler feel like a person in ways that he didn't believe he deserved. He feels pride at successfully dismantling and building a motorcycle. He feels a proper amount of remorse when he sets Sam's oven on fire. He feels happiness when Sam smiles at him, and sadness when Sam is upset. He feels satisfaction when he understands that Sam is not upset with  _him_. He feels like a person when Sam leans over and kisses him soft, feels triumph when he understands what kissing means, and what Sam means when he kisses him.

 **['cause the spaces between my fingers are right where yours fit perfectly]**

They meet cute like the people in movies do. He looks up and she's there, and something happens, and he doesn't remember what now because the world has narrowed down to her for the moment. She's a bright light in the room, and he has to know who she is. He didn't know he could feel things this way, he's never had this reaction to a girl before. He stutters, and pushes his glasses up his nose, and he's reduced to the quirky male lead, and she's the upbeat female lead.

She asks him out for ice cream the next time, and he gets to know her. He knows her name is Quorra, and that she likes Jules Verne. He knows that she has to have three different cups of tea a day. He knows that she can do a handstand on a guard rail. She wants to know what ice cream he usually gets and refuses to let him get it when he tells her. They eat sea salt ice cream, which is a lot more pleasant than it sounds, and they talk about things they haven't done. 

He's never gotten grass stains on jeans, and she's never jumped off a swing. They go to the park and she gets her jeans dirty, too. He's never eaten a whole bucket of popcorn, and she's never snuck into a movie, and for that matter, he hasn't done that either. They go to the theatre and see a movie about country singers, then they see a movie about cowboys. He's never kissed a girl, and she's never kissed him, so they kiss cute under the stars and the world narrows down to Junior and Quorra for the moment.

 **[i want to recognize, your beauty's not just a mask]  
**  
It isn't the first time that Junior is dragged out to a bar he doesn't particularly want to go to, and it certainly won't be the last. The music thumps loudly, almost too loudly for the speakers, some nameless tune that will be popular for the next ten minutes, whose lyrics will be remembered for the next eight. The air smells like fruity alcohol, perfume and sex. Bodies grind and gyrate, and people lose themselves their minds in a slow spiral headed straight to last call. Sam is out there somewhere with a beautiful woman on one arm and a beautiful man on the other. Junior only feels a little jealous. Really.

And then the beautiful man is in front of him, with his hip cocked, his tattooed arms bared, black on snow-pale skin, electric blue eyes transmitting something that Junior doesn't see every day. And there's a warm, strong hand on his, and another on his hip, and he's being guided out to the dance floor. He doesn't remember this dance because he never knew it, this slow grind, this feeling of a strong body against his, but Rinzler is teaching him, instructing him in the art desire with a body that's seen a lifetime of grace. He feels clumsy next to this beautiful man, but he won't step away, won't turn back, too enthralled in this. It doesn't matter any more that he doesn't want to be here, doesn't like this club, doesn't like this music. He likes it right where he is.

And Rinzler's body is hot like a brand against his, willing him into a trance, moving with him, against him, and all he wants is to feel that body. Wants to run his hands up and down it, follow his hands with his lips, his tongue, wants to lay this man down and have him. He's helpless in a tide of desire, sudden, unexpected, a solid wall going up up up, and he's trapped between a wall and a body, and Rinzler is licking his mouth open in a sweet kiss that tastes like fruity alcohol, perfume and sex, and he is swept away.

 **[but every time we return to our scene, it seems less like a crime]**

Their friendship is a cautious one at first, unsure of the other and their intentions. Quorra has a long history of distrust regarding Rinzler, and Rinzler is very much aware of that distrust. Things are halting at first, and they are close out of necessity as opposed to actual desire to spend time with one another. But Quorra is unrelentingly kind, and Rinzler is unashamedly affectionate, and so they cannot dislike each other for longer than is strictly necessary. 

They have a lot to teach each other, and a lot to learn together. They are not the same, but neither is human. They learn this world from the bottom up and learn each other as they discover themselves. They share a bond and a world that is not completely theirs alone, but enough theirs that they are not lonely in this new world. Rinzler is not the man who derezzed countless, and the fate of everything does not rest on Quorra's shoulders. They discover this together.

Together they learn that in their friendship they are not committing some grave tresspass on the memory of thousands. They are not committing a sin, or an evil. They are not responsible for things that could not have been changed, could barely be thought to have even occurred differently than they did. They learn all that and more when Rinzler leans over to lay a soft kiss on the corner of Quorra's mouth, clumsy and shy, ever unsure of himself, and she smiles, and teaches him what she knows. 

 **[to the bed, the left unsaid, crawl in from outside my window]  
**  
And this is how they come together, not entirely one by one, each discovering each other at the same time. Their love for one another is different, they all fulfil a need for the others. They love each other equally, and they build a life together. It's not always easy, but the best things in life never are. Sam, Junior, Quorra and Rinzler are all the furthest thing from perfect. But the funny thing about perfection is that it's unknowable, and yet, right in front of your eyes all the time. 

They accept each other for their flaws, and for their perfections. They shield one another from the harshness of the world, and share the softness. Life is composed of nine to five, of pancakes on sunday and a particularly comfortable rug, of popcorn at Alan's house, and double features at the movie. It's cute moments and harsh moments, moments where things could fall apart but never do. It's streamers on New Years and snow fights on Valentines. It's losing family and finding them, and in the absence of family, it is making one. It is the first kiss phenomenon, and other justifications for loving people and programs.


End file.
